I noticed that as well. My detector went over 150 cpm early in the morning on Monday and stayed in 100s until around noon. I verified readings with second detector.

I remember that you recently changed your filter and so did I. Before I changed my filter (which was 30 days old) I was already detecting elevated levels. That is out of the ordinary to get elevated readings off a filter that is 30 days old as you know. It is common to get some elevated levels within a week after changing my filter, but clearly the elevated levels from my unit and the units around the U.S. verify elevated levels.

I see that the EPA Aurora Illinois gamma RadNet station near you shows elevated readings as of 08/15/2017 in the a.m.

As I do more research, I believe that I might have found a valid possible source of these recent elevated radiation readings. Taking a screen capture from the NETC free animated radiation history map, I see an elevated reading at three of the EPA RadNet gamma stations near each other. In an effort to save NETC bandwidth (limited funding you know) I have used a free hosting site for the screen capture: https://ibb.co/mPduWa

It has been reported that the Quad Cities nuclear reactor number 2 was shutdown for maintenance from 12:05 am CDT on August 6 and was started up again this past Sunday August 13, 2017. I am not yet sure if the shutdown was a slow controlled shutdown or a SCRAM. The outage was reported to do maintenance on the main transformer. As we know, nuclear reactors release more radiation during a SCRAM than during a slow controlled shutdown. Furthermore, elevated levels of radiation are released during a reactor start-up. I should mention that the EPA and & NRC say these are all safe levels. I believe what many nuclear experts believe, less radiation is best.

0% August 11, 201714% August 12, 201746% August 13, 201770% August 14, 201784% August 15, 2017

If the only maintenance truly done was to just a transformer, I would assume we should see this reactor continue to climb up slowly to 100% power shortly. If we see the reactor decrease in power within the next week or so, that would cause me some concern as to what old or new problem might have happened.

This press release from the nuclear plants parent company is interesting:

Quote:

AUGUST 7, 2017CORDOVA, Ill. – Exelon Generation operators removed Quad Cities Unit 2 from service at 12:05 a.m. Sunday to repair a component on the unit’s main power transformer, which transfers electricity from the nuclear plant to the electrical grid. While the unit is offline, technicians will inspect, repair and fully test the transformer before returning Unit 2 to service.

While this likely is true, it's interesting to note that according to the NRC Reactor Status Report records, the Quad Cities unit 2 reactor was not taken offline slowly as often done during scheduled maintenance. On August 5, 2017 it was running at 100% power and on August 6, 2017 it shows 0% power. It appears no automatic emergency SCRAM was triggered that normally causes the same such rapid shutdown of the reactor yet no mention in the press release of a "scheduled" shutdown either. I believe this likely means the emergency SCRAM can't detect or didn't detect this transformer failure and the operators had to do an unscheduled manual shutdown of the reactor for maintenance.

Also note that the removal from service occurred at 12:05 am. The decision to shut it down must have been made shortly after the component failure. There is no NRC Event Notification Report, so it must not have been deemed an emergency or safety problem.

Also note that the removal from service occurred at 12:05 am. The decision to shut it down must have been made shortly after the component failure. There is no NRC Event Notification Report, so it must not have been deemed an emergency or safety problem.

The NRC Event Notifications can sometimes be posted long after the event.

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